


Vampires in DC

by Masterpiece_of_turkey_cleverness



Series: Laura/Lex [1]
Category: The Agency (TV 2001), The Warlock Case Files - Juli Monroe
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Impersonating an FBI officer, Meet-Cute, Quinn is totally a vampire and you can't change my mind, Vampires doing what they do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 16:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19397794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masterpiece_of_turkey_cleverness/pseuds/Masterpiece_of_turkey_cleverness
Summary: Lex sees something strange while working a case that he's mysteriously removed from.  Only Laura can give him answers.





	Vampires in DC

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a nebulous time before the end of the Agency and after the start of the Warlock Case Files, which is not technically possible timeline-wise, but *handwaves* in this story the Agency is now magically as modern as the Warlock Case Files. 
> 
> For the Non-Gabe Rich Bingo. Fills the square, **"Vampire AU."**
> 
> Kindly beta'd by WarlockWriter!

Lex felt that he really should be more uncomfortable alone in the back of a windowless van, but at the moment, he was fine. He had his coffee-with-a-shot-of-espresso in his mug next to him, and his fingers were flying over his ergonomic keyboard. The van even had air conditioning (he’d claimed his computer had needed it, which was not actually untrue given the CPU speed). 

Jackson had found this case, and they still weren’t sure if it was anything the Agency needed to worry about. A Romanian diplomat had fallen ill at some nightclub and died after being transported back to the Embassy earlier in the evening. The Romanians had politely told Jackson to butt out following the Agency’s offer of help, but Jackson cited conflicting reports from ‘Lounge 201’ and had parked Lex, his computer, and the van near the nightclub. At the moment, Lex was just trying to get a hold of any surveillance footage the club had. 

So far, it had been a walk in the park. The nightclub had fewer cameras than he’d expected, but it was uptown, and Important People who valued their privacy tended to frequent establishments like this. He’d downloaded the footage from the entrance cam and scanned it; it clearly showed the diplomat entering with a small entourage, and being carried out by the same people a few hours later, looking extremely pale. 

Judging by the outfits worn by the patrons, there was a great deal of money walking in and out of the door, and the club was some kind of goth and/or BDSM place. Something about the people attending set Lex’s teeth on edge. This was definitely not a Nice place, and he could pretty much guess what had happened to the diplomat and why the Romanian embassy was so keen to have the Agency leave it alone. 

Still, he was a professional, so he began to download the footage from a camera that apparently looked out from the bar area. As he did, he played the video, starting about five minutes before the diplomat was rushed out. 

And got the shock of his life. 

The Romanian diplomat was actually fairly close to the camera, dancing with another man. Oh, that didn’t shock Lex. He was very much a ‘love and let love’ kind of guy, and he’d seen almost everything it was possible to see as a hacker for the Agency. No, it was when the other man reached over and...deliberately bit the diplomat’s neck? Not gently, either. Like, ‘there was some blood spray’ hard. And...were those _fangs_?

Before he could truly process what he was seeing, the feed disappeared. “What the fuck?” Lex sat up straighter and began typing. Ah. It seemed that the security cameras were being wiped, and that someone had written a program to kill anything that had been downloaded already. The entrance cam feed was safe behind a partition already, but the feed from inside hadn’t been backed up yet. Lex growled and went after the hacker who was trying to erase the evidence of what had happened. The hacker wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t all that great, either. Lex may have lost the footage, but he’d still get the hacker, and he had intimate knowledge of how the CIA could lean on hackers for information. Or skills--not that the CIA would want to hire this guy.

A few minutes later, Lex had an IP trace going along with a virtual prison he was about to trap the hacker in so that he’d have to stay online while the trace went through. Because he was very, very good, he also had bits and pieces of footage from some of the other cameras in the place that he’d managed to rescue. Sadly, he didn’t have anything from the camera he’d been watching, but maybe he’d find something else in the other videos. 

“You think you’re good, Mr. Hacker, but you’re not. Wait until you see...this!” Lex didn’t care that he was talking to himself; he was alone, after all. Sadly, that meant that there was no one around to witness his genius except the other hacker. With a flourish of his hand, he hit the key to spring the trap and then leaned back in his seat, a smug grin on his face.

That lasted all of a moment, until he realized that the other hacker was still getting away--Lex’s program hadn’t worked. “No no no no. What?” He quickly put his hands back on the keyboard and started typing, but it was too late. His trace wasn’t going to go through, and in seconds the hacker would be offline. Maybe, just maybe, he had enough time for one more try of his program before they were gone forever. 

“That’s not possible!” he exclaimed, glaring at his computer. “I had--unless.” A thought occurred to him, and instinct sent him into a different mode. He let the hacker he’d found go, even cancelling his trace. But he metaphorically whirled around on the computer and looked behind him. He was pretty sure his program had been fool-proof; he’d tested it before. The only way it wouldn’t have worked is if someone on his end had made it not work...which meant there was a third hacker involved. _Someone_ was helping the first hacker by hacking _him._ And no one hacked Lex without consequences!

Lex watched the first hacker blink out of existence--they’d gone offline, and if they knew what they were doing, they’d stay that way for a while. He had a momentary pang of guilt--what if the right thing to do had been to try to capture that hacker again? “Ah-ha!” he exclaimed moments later as he spotted the tracks of what indeed was a third hacker. If he hadn’t focused on them when he did, both hackers probably would have gotten away. The third had overextended themselves, however, and despite him throwing up a bunch of firewalls in Lex’s face, he was able to trace the second hacker just seconds before they got offline. He was impressed; this one was at least as good as he was. Maybe even better (although he’d never admit it). But now he had a real IP address and a username. 

Lex recognized the username, though he was surprised to see it. It belonged to one of the many hackers that Lex carefully avoided ‘discovering’ on a daily basis because they tended to do more good than harm. What on Earth was a good guy doing helping the bad guys? Lex wasn’t sure of much, but he /was/ fairly certain that the partygoers at the club were bad guys. At least, some of them were; why erase the footage if not?

Lex leapt about three feet when someone gave the secret knock that told him to let them into the back, and then pulled up the feed from the micro-cam on the back door and looked at it. It wasn’t Jackson standing there, as he’d assumed; it was Quinn. “Oh, shit,” he said under his breath, before hastily unlocking the back door and opening it. 

Quinn looked odd at night under the street lights, or maybe he was just ill--and he was definitely upset. Something about the way he was looking at Lex gave him goosebumps. “Lex. What are you doing here?”

“Um, well, Ja--er, Mr. Haisley--asked me to come down and, um, get any video footage this place might have because of what happened to the Romanian diplomat. Sir.”

Quinn looked as impassive as ever. “We currently have a good relationship with the Romanians, who declined our services when we offered them. Moreover, I am here in a, shall we say, unofficial capacity, making certain that everything is taken care of.” He paused a moment. “Were you able to obtain any footage?”

Lex licked his lips. Was he in trouble, or not? He wasn’t sure. “I have all of the footage from the entryway, and bits and pieces of some of the rest. I just checked, though, and none of the rest are really from relevant times.” He thought about telling Quinn what he’d seen, but, let’s face it, Quinn wouldn’t believe him and he’d just end up feeling stupid. 

“Well. Considering that and the fact that Homeland Security already has things well in hand, I am ordering you--and asking Mr. Haisley--to leave this alone. Delete the footage you have, drive the van back to the pool, and go home. Take tomorrow off. I’ll speak with Mr. Haisley myself and ask him to call you with confirmation afterward.”

“...Yes, Sir.” Lex said the only thing he could, really. “Right away.” 

“Good. Enjoy your lie-in.” Quinn turned and left. Lex pulled the back door of the van closed and shut everything he had down (he’d delete the footage later), then climbed back into the front of the van. 

“...What in the _hell_ just happened?” Lex asked himself, before starting up the van and heading back to the carpool with it. Jackson called him on the way, to let him know that Quinn (through Gage) had asked that they stand down and delete any evidence they had. 

.oOOo.

After he woke up the following morning, Lex got out his computer and carefully looked through the footage. None of it contained any hint of what he’d seen on the video last night, although it could be because he hadn’t lied to Quinn: aside from the entrance camera, the video was from times outside of the window he was interested in. There did seem to be some people wearing fangs in some of the files, and lots of people were wearing red and black, so it was probably a Goth club. Lex had gone through a short Goth phase in his teenage years, but he had never stooped so low as to wear fangs. Mostly because he hadn’t had the money. 

In the light of day, he was able to convince himself that his imagination had exaggerated the whole biting-the-throat thing. Obviously, it had been someone with fake fangs, not a real vampire. Lex highlighted all of the files and dumped them in the trash, as he’d been told--all except the entrance cam. That, he decided to look at again. 

This time, instead of watching for the diplomat and his entourage, he watched to see when the man the diplomat had been dancing with had come and gone. The man had arrived an hour or two after the diplomat...and he hadn’t come out. He must have still been in the club when Lex and Quinn were there. _Did Quinn know?_ Lex wondered. 

Lex rewound the tape to the point where the man had entered, blew up his face, and slowed down the images. The close-ups showed the man’s teeth, and they looked perfectly normal. He must have had insertable fangs, and put them in after he’d gone in the club. 

Lex sat back in his chair and considered the facts. A Romanian diplomat had gone to a club, been injured, not taken ill as had been claimed, and had died later. It seemed as if a guy at the club had bit the diplomat in the wrong place with fake fangs, causing him to lose too much blood. Although...how did that work, exactly? The instant the injury had occurred, someone should’ve pressed something to the wound and gotten him to a hospital--even in a politically questionable situation, there was no reason to let the guy just bleed out. Besides, unless the fangs had struck just right, it would have taken ages for someone to die of blood loss from a fang-sized neck wound. 

He continued to ponder. There was still the ‘vampires are real’ explanation, of course, but it was ludicrous. Vampires didn’t really exist. Monsters were, unfortunately, very very human; Lex had met enough of them personally. But then what had he seen? If it had been nearly anything else, Lex would have believed that what he’d seen had been real. But it was much more likely that the guy with the fake fangs had managed a one in a million bite than that vampires were real. 

With a sigh, Lex deleted the entrance cam footage; there was nothing on it that mattered, and he’d been ordered to drop the subject. Which was another thing that was scratching gently at the back of his mind. How, exactly, had Quinn managed to order Jackson to back off? And why? And how had Quinn gotten there so fast? Lex wasn’t exactly surprised that he’d spotted the van, but really...what was Homeland Security doing involved in this anyway?

Frustrated, he went to the kitchen and threw a breakfast burrito in the microwave and poured himself another cup of coffee. His eye fell on a note, which he’d brought in along with his computer. It had an IP address and a username. Ah, right. The hacker he’d ‘caught.’ They would know something. But would they tell him? Unlikely, he thought. Unless…

It would get him in trouble if anyone else found out, but...who was going to find out? Shaking his head, he sat back down at his computer with his coffee and completely forgot about the burrito as he researched the owner of the IP address. 

.oOOo.

Lex went over to the apartment building where the IP address had originated that afternoon. It was huge, and Metro-accessible, not that he cared; he’d driven his bike over. He started getting nervous when he finally found the right floor, though that changed when he walked up to the door, which had some serious reinforcement. Briefly, he wondered if, as an agent, he should invest in the same kind of security, but he supposed it would completely blow his cover as a mild-mannered greeting-card writer. 

Lex straightened from his typical slouch and tried to look official before he pressed the doorbell. He could see a small security camera looking at him; who lived here, anyway?

“No solicitors,” a female voice told him through a loudspeaker. 

“I’m not a solicitor. I’m from the FBI. I have some questions for a Jim Davenport that lives at this location.” Lex pulled out one of his fake badges, and briefly flashed it at the camera. 

“Badge number, please?” Thankfully Lex had a backstopped cover at the FBI that he used regularly. He read out the number from memory, waited a few minutes, and then the voice said, “Just a moment.”

A minute or two later, the door was unlocked and opened from the inside. A fairly nondescript man, about Lex’s height, opened the door. “I’m Jim Davenport. How can I help you?” he asked.

“Hi. Could we talk inside?” Lex asked. 

“I’d rather not.” Jim shook his head, and folded his arms across his chest. 

“All right. Um.” Damn it, FBI agents didn’t say ‘um.’ “Can you tell me your whereabouts yesterday evening around 2AM?”

Jim frowned. “Yeah. I was here, in my room, sleeping.”

“You weren’t online?” Lex wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with it when the bad guys denied doing anything. Weren’t they just supposed to roll over and admit they did it? They did on TV…

“No. Laura probably was, though,” Jim said, shaking his head. He didn’t seem as if he was lying, either. 

“That’s...Laura McCall?” Lex had noticed that the apartment was in her name, but he had just assumed that of the two, Jim was the hacker. 

“Yeah.”

“What’s going on, Jim?” Given that the approaching voice was female, it was probably Laura. Odd that it had taken her so long to investigate, though, Lex thought. Olivia would have been looking over his shoulder in--no, best not to think about her. 

“May I speak with her?” Lex didn’t think she was the hacker, but you never knew. If he’d ended up with a fake IP address for that second hacker, which was looking more and more likely every minute, he was going to kick himself for weeks. 

Lex was forced to readjust several thought patterns as Jim opened the door further. Laura was small, with bubblegum pink hair. She sat in a red, motorized wheelchair. But, before he could conclude that his mysterious hacker had gotten away from him, he noticed her black T-shirt, with a d20 over each breast showing natural twenties. He mentally smacked himself for his bias. And his stare. 

Laura looked amused when he finally managed to make eye contact with her. “Laura McCall?” he asked. “Were you online last night around 2 AM?”

“Unless you have a warrant, you can speak with my lawyer if you want to question me. Jim, could you go get her contact information for the nice FBI agent?”

Jim grunted in the affirmative, and went around the wheelchair before disappearing into the apartment. 

“Look, ma’am, I’m sure you haven’t done anything wrong; this is in regards to, um,” the stare she was giving him was challenging, and Lex had never been completely comfortable around people in wheelchairs. Fuck. Stiles wouldn’t melt under pressure like this! Lex tried to think of something reassuring, and failed. Instead, he blurted out, “Look, I’m L3xic0n69. I caught you last night, I think. I’m with the government, but I’ve been ordered not to investigate, but...I saw something last night and it’s bothering me and you’re the only person I can ask about it.”

Laura’s lips twitched at his username, though she sobered up quickly and seemed to consider his request. “Come in,” she said finally, turning the wheelchair around and motoring further into the apartment. 

Lex blew out a breath, then stepped into the apartment. The secure door closed by itself behind him, and he followed Laura down the hallway into a sparse living room...though he barely glanced at the furnishings. Instead, his eyes fell on Laura’s computer, and he whistled. “Niiiiiiice setup,” he said. “Intel or SPARC?”

Laura snorted. “Intel. Like that’s even a question anymore.” This launched a technical discussion that saw Jim walk in with the information Laura had requested, stare at the both of them for a few minutes, and then silently set the bit of paper down on Laura’s computer desk and walk out. 

Eventually, the discussion wound down, as Lex remembered why he was there. “So, uh. So you’re--I mean, I recognize you from online.” He took a seat, as he was uncomfortable standing over her. “And normally, you do good stuff. I’ve seen you hacking before, but nothing you were doing was bad, so I ignored you. But last night…” He wasn’t entirely sure how to finish the sentence. 

“What did you see?” Laura eyed him--not that there was much else she could do from her wheelchair. He realized she ran the whole thing with her mouth; her hands seemed to be permanently contorted.

Lex pursed his lips. How much to tell her? “You stopped me from catching a hacker who was erasing video surveillance at an upscale nightclub where someone had ‘taken ill’ so quickly that they died a few hours later. ...Did someone pay you to do that?” A labrador retriever wandered into the room and wagged its tail before walking over to sniff Lex. “...May I pet him?” The dog was wearing a service harness, and Lex knew at least enough to ask before giving the dog attention. 

“Sure. That’s Billy,” Laura replied to the latter, likely to avoid answering the former. “This is completely off the record?” she asked finally. 

Lex reached down to pet the dog. “Hi, Billy,” he said, scratching the dog on the sides of its face. Billy seemed to enjoy that, and started wagging his tail harder, circling around for back-end scratches, which Lex happily provided. Lex hesitated when Laura asked her question, but realized that it wasn’t as if he could have her arrested anyway. “Yeah. Like I said, I’m not supposed to be investigating. But things don’t add up.” 

“Okay,” she said finally. “Yes, you caught me last night. And no, I wasn’t paid to do it. I don’t take jobs just because they pay well. I did a friend a favor. He was panicking, because you were about to catch his hacker. Why are you so interested in this?”

“Partly because of you,” Lex admitted. “I didn’t know why someone like you would do a job like that. You do know you helped cover up what was probably a murder, right?”

Laura grimaced. “Yeah. I told them I’d never do that, but...do you know anything about the diplomat’s background?”

Lex frowned, and shook his head. “Only that he was Romanian.” 

“He had a...liking...for very young boys. Everyone knew it, but no one could do anything about it.” It was Laura’s turn to purse her lips. “He was untouchable in Romania because he was a distant cousin of the ruling family there. He was sent here by certain individuals who wanted to stop him both from hurting people and embarrassing the Royal Family. I can show you the police reports, if you want, though they’re in Romanian.”

Lex could get by in a lot of languages, but he wasn’t going to disclose that. He grimaced at Laura’s story, although he found it odd that the CIA wasn’t involved. Then again, Quinn had been there--shit. If he wasn’t careful, he might step on Quinn’s toes and then he’d be in real trouble. “I believe you.” Oddly enough, he did. Laura was being open about it all, and what she was saying made too much sense (and sounded a bit too familiar). “What I don’t understand, though,” Lex continued, “Is the method. Why have someone with fake fangs bite him and then wait for him to bleed out?”

Something flickered in Laura’s eyes. “How do you know what happened? I know for a fact that all of the footage inside the club got erased.”

“I watched some of it before it was erased,” Lex replied with a shrug. “I saw the guy bite him. There was actually some blood spray, believe it or not.”

“I think it had something to do with the fact he was from Romania. You know, vampires and everything,” Laura said, lifting her eyebrows. It was impossible for Lex to read her body language, since she basically didn’t have any. “Just in case the cause of death /did/ get out, to make it too ridiculous to report. But you’d have to ask my friend. All _I_ did was help a fellow hacker evade a search online. Which, since you failed to identify yourself as law enforcement _and,_ I’m guessing, didn’t have a warrant, was not illegal.”

Lex made a face. “Touché,” he admitted. He went over the facts in his head, and decided that ‘weird assassination to throw people off’ made perfect sense in this case. “So, was that World of Warcraft I saw up on your screen when I first came in?”

“Yeah.” Laura seemed to relax slightly, and smiled at him. “I was doing a raid, but everyone knows I have to drop out sometimes. No big.”

“Sorry,” Lex offered. “What do you play?”

“My main’s a blood elf. You?”

“A Furbolg. What server do you play on?” Just like that, the two of them were off again, discussing particularly annoying raids and the class Blizzard had recently nerfed. Billy settled down next to Lex, allowing the hacker to scratch his head. 

Eventually, Jim came in and cleared his throat. “Laura. We need to do some housekeeping.” 

“Ah. Right. Sorry,” she told Lex, and it seemed like an honest apology. “I’m going to have to kick you out.”

“That’s okay. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have stayed so long,” Lex replied, standing up. “Um, I guess just don’t give me any further reason to have to tell my superiors about you, and there won’t be any problem. It was nice meeting you.”

Laura’s eyes sparkled wickedly. “You too, ‘Lexicon69,’” she smirked. “Jim, can you show him out?”

“Sure,” replied Jim, leading Lex back down the hallway where he’d come in. 

“You are one lucky man,” Lex told Jim in a low tone, once he thought they were out of earshot. 

Jim frowned, and glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“Your girlfriend,” Lex explained. “She’s gorgeous, smart, AND amazing with computers.”

“Oh.” Jim chuckled. “She’s not my girlfriend. I’m just her caretaker,” he explained as he opened the door to let Lex out. 

“Really?” Lex looked back toward the living room. “Does she have a boyfriend?”

“No,” Jim replied, shaking his head. “Some male friends, but no boyfriend. As far as I can tell, all the male friends are gay.” 

Shit! Lex walked out the door, wishing he had made a pass at Laura. “Um...could you give her this? Tell her to text me if she’s at all interested. Please?” He pulled out a card with his greeting card writer cover on it, and handed it over. 

Jim shook his head, but took the proffered card. “Good luck. Just so you know, though, she’s pretty weird.”

“It seems like a much better kind of weird than my last girlfriend,” Lex replied, beaming as Jim shut the door. He looked up at the camera covering Laura’s doorway and gave it a wink before turning to walk toward the elevator.


End file.
